[Footnote 304: Ibid., vol. i. p. 166.]

It is thus obvious that, with proper qualifications, we may admit _the
relativity of human knowledge_, and yet at the same time reject the
doctrine of Hamilton, _that all human knowledge is only of the
phenomenal_.

"The relativity of human knowledge," like most other phrases into which
the word "relative" enters, is vague, and admits of a variety of
meanings. If by this phrase is meant "that we can not know objects
except as related to our faculties, or as our faculties are related to
them," we accept the statement, but regard it as a mere truism leading
to no consequences, and hardly worth stating in words. It is simply
another way of saying that, in order to an object's being known, it must
come within the range of our intellectual vision, and that we can only
know as much as we are capable of knowing. Or, if by this phrase is
meant "that we can only know things by and through the phenomena they
present," we admit this also, for we can no more know substances apart
from their properties, than we can know qualities apart from the
substances in which they inhere. Substances can be known only in and
through their phenomena. Take away the properties, and the thing has no
longer any existence. Eliminate extension, form, density, etc., from
matter, and what have you left? "The thing in itself," apart from its
qualities, is nothing. Or, again, if by the relativity of knowledge is
meant "that all consciousness, all thought are relative," we accept this
statement also. To conceive, to reflect, to know, is to deal with
difference and relation; the relation of subject and object; the
relation of objects among themselves; the relation of phenomena to
reality, of becoming to being. The reason of man is unquestionably
correlated to that which is beyond phenomena; it is able to apprehend
the necessary relation between phenomena and being, extension and space,
succession and time, event and cause, the finite and the infinite. We
may thus admit the _relative character of human thought_, and at the
same time deny that it is an ontological disqualification.[305]

It is not, however, in any of these precise forms that Hamilton holds
the doctrine of the relativity of knowledge. He assumes a middle place
between Reid and Kant, and endeavors to blend the subjective idealism of
the latter with the realism of the former. "He identifies the
_phenomenon_ of the German with the _quality_ of the Britis